Halloween craft ideas for the kids

With 2 children, aged 9 and 5, the run up to Halloween is always full of talk about how we are going to make the house look more spooktacular than the year before. ‘Not to worry’ I thought because we have our trusty Halloween box which is packed full of scary Halloween horrors that we have lovingly crafted over the years, we are easily going to be the scariest house on the street!

I went to the attic to retrieve our ‘Halloween box’, full of confidence that the contents would be suitably scary and ready to go, it is only on closer inspection that I realized that said box has not been restocked, or infact shown any love for a good few years now. We love a bit of double sided sticky tape and glitter in our house, but the Halloween box has clearly been over looked and the contents are all definitely very sad, the pipe cleaner spiders are all missing legs and the egg carton bats have no eyes and would certainly not be able to fly. The contents of said box are certainly scary but for all the wrong reasons!

So with Halloween just around the corner I have taken to the internet to find the best spooky craft ideas to inject a bit of life into our box and to regain the spot of spookiest house on the street, here are some of the things that I have found:

Ghost milk cartons – Readers Digest have these milk carton ghosts which look really fun to me and I am going to cut a hole in the bottom to get the fairy lights to glow from the inside, or get some led lights to put in the hole. Readers Digest have some other ideas if you want to check them out: http://www.rd.com/home/decorating/cheap-halloween-decorations/

Painted pumpkins – If the whole idea of carving shapes into your pumpkin is just too much or you just want to have fun with your little ones and you want something quicker and easier, then the idea of painting your pumpkin is a really good one, you can literally paint whatever you want, a minion, a witch, a scary face or you could be super creative and paint something and cut out holes as well…For some simple but inspiring ideas you could head to: http://blog.thecelebrationshoppe.com/2010/10/18/simple-spray-painted-pumpkins/

Tissues paper jars – For me an effective way of upcycling some old jars and making some spooky decorations is to cover them with different coloured tissue paper, draw on a funny face with marker pen and either pop a nightlight or an led light in.